surprise 50th birthday cupcake tower

yesterday, i loaded up 14 boxes of cupcakes, a tower, one cake, lots of decorations and backup frosting and headed to durham to assemble this cake tower for my old pastor's surprise 50th birthday party.

&;

i was thankful that, despite the poor suspension in my dear old isuzu rodeo, the cupcakes made it with only some slight damage. it wouldn't really have mattered, since the sun and heat would prove to be their ultimate nemesis. it was a long day and i'm glad to have this all in my rear view mirror. i think i'm due for another cake hiatus. at least for a week or so....

eat free chikin.

jake, isaac and myself will be dressing up as cows today and heading to chick fil a for some free food today. it's cow appreciation day!

learn all about it at cowappreciationday.com.

rapper's delight roller babies.

i love this for so many reasons.
thanks, derek.

mohawk farmer

isaac has been very helpful in the garden this year.
he is pretty good about waiting for us to show him which veggie to pick, except when it comes to tomatoes. apparently, they are too alluring for him. he just picks with reckless abandon. doesn't really matter i suppose, since we always have zillions more than we need...

4th cupcakes.

made these for the two parties we had on the fourth of july.
it was mostly just an excuse to test out my new daisy cutter.
and i didn't even get to do that, since jake and his pal from church did all the cutting.
here they are, nonetheless....

batavia trip - volume 6 - miscellaneous

couldn't leave out these shots:

isaac having his first (very artificially colored) push pop. thanks "new gramma":

jake reading to isaac :)...

jake and isaac feeding the fish:

and, i'll let you guess what is taking place in this shot:

batavia trip - volume 5 - utica trip

from batavia, i did something that i always intend to do, but haven't done since 2004*... i made a trip out to my old college town of utica to visit some old friends. how i had missed all my old favorite stops: the varick, franco's pizza, the utica marsh, the scenic view of industry long gone from the arterial, black jeans and black leather coats... :)

anyhoooo... i actually only made two stops. to visit chrisclarke and mandy allison. and sadly, i only took pics whilst with chrisclarke. we went out to her "buddy shack" and rode the party boat and jet skis and played in the sand. jake even took a turn on the jet ski, as you'll see in the last pic. and that's chrisclarke with him. :)

batavia trip - volume 4 - austin park with the redbands varlands

on a couple of occasions, we visited the new and improved austin park and visited with my old pal from high school, julie redband varland. :)
she's got two little varlands herself, so it's fun to have playdates in batavia.

isaac mostly liked the swing and jake did a great job obliging him:

here's a lovely shot of the varland clan:

batavia trip - volume 3 - the mohawk

leslie cut isaac's hair and derek found out about it on facebook. :)

batavia trip - volume 2 - stafford parade

for those not in the batavia new york "know"... after the st. joe's carnival (see previous post), comes the stafford carnival. since we were all carnivalled out, we only went to the carnival kickoff event -- the parade. it was pretty rough... lots and lots and lots of firetrucks. and lots and lots of space between them. we left early. here's some pictures.

isaac and debbie waiting for the candy tossers:

an obnoxious bigger girl taking candy that has clearly landed on isaac's parade property (he didn't quite understand what to do about the candy raining down from the heavens):

checking out a big tractor:

checking out a tootsie roll:

sitting with mom:

just watching:

watching with "new gramma":

posing for a photo with our $8 thomas balloon that lasted until the following morning when it met it's demise after a nasty confrontation with a ceiling fan:

(note: to be fair, grampa terry gave isaac a whopping $2 to buy a balloon at the parade, so i only had to pony up $6 for the thomas balloon.)